When I was nine years old, pain was getting smacked in the ankle with a metal Razor scooter. For a nine-year-old today, pain is running into Sephora and failing to find any Drunk Elephant Bronzing Drops.
Over winter break, I spent an unfortunate amount of my time watching TikToks of millennial mothers sharing what they got their daughters for Christmas based on what they wrote on their lists — Sol de Janeiro perfume, Dior blush, Laneige lip masks, White Fox sweatsuits, Stanley cups and more. These Christmas haul videos should evoke more than a simple eye roll and scroll. They’re a harbinger of a growing issue where kids, especially young girls, are growing up way too fast.
This phenomenon has been observed and talked about everywhere. People complain constantly about elementary-school aged kids and middle school tweens overtaking Ultas that are meant for teenagers and adult women. They blame social media for exposing children to trends and mature content, and they attribute children’s apparent brand awareness to companies consciously targeting ads at kids instead of parents. But the root of this problem goes deeper than these contributing factors — the root of the problem lies with their parents.
Who allows kids to have iPhones and access to social media in the first place? Their parents. The iPhone came out in 2007, yet most of Generation Z didn’t have one until about age 12. That’s likely because our parents, Generation X, often had involved, protective parenting styles that strayed from being permissive and led to rule-driven households.
54 percent of Millennial parents consider their children to be close friends, and therein lies the issue. With many kids seeing their parents as buddies instead of authority figures, they feel empowered to ask for whatever they want, such as social media and mature products they’re finding on those platforms
In the videos that I watched, many of the mothers did express concerns over their daughters growing up too fast and trying to maintain a balance of gifting child-like presents and more mature products for them to experiment with. They also said they felt bad about saying no to certain gifts because their childrens’ friends were allowed to have them. The inability to tell a child no, even if it risks the parent’s best friend status, is the underlying problem.
Because many millennials had strict, authoritarian Baby Boomer parents, it’s likely that this desire to be the “cool, fun mom” is an active response to be different from the parenting style they had growing up. But there is a fine line between being a loving, generous parent and letting your child have and do whatever their heart desires. Children are supposed to see their parents as people who can guide them. They’re supposed to be superiors, not equals.
My generation, especially the female side of it, grew up wearing clothes from Justice when we were in elementary school. We ran around in Claire’s and went to Build-A-Bear for fun. We played with Lego and American Girl dolls, and we had gooey fake makeup that came in a pink plastic phone. It’s clear that even when our generation was young, we were also targets of brand consumption. However, those products were not mature — those products were toys.
Even nine-year-olds who had access to iPads and Youtube weren’t yearning to be like the teenagers they were watching, at least to the same degree. We managed to find happiness in our Barbies and Lisa Frank sparkly notebooks.
